


Ink-stained

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Chapter and Verse (Varric Tethras x Min Hawke) [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 00:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Varric writes, but sometimes life gets in the way.  Seems to happen more since Hawke came to town.





	Ink-stained

Sometimes Varric thinks he dwells too much in ink and paper. It’s a feeling that strikes him sometimes as he settles down to write, the finely-made pen slotting comfortably into the callus rising from the edge of his ring finger. He doesn’t remember when he first noticed the callus; it’s been part of the landscape of his hand for decades.

Ink smudges his fingers. Always has. Sometimes he genuinely tries to keep away from the drying ink, but other times his hand is furious on the paper, ink blacking the ball of his palm and his fingertips and sometimes the other hand entirely. Sometimes the story demands its own voice, even if it’s a trashy one, and the words spool out of him almost faster than he can keep up with.

Sometimes it’s a story only meant for two, and his writing goes  _very_ careful then, each word precise and perfect plucked from liquid ink and gleaming nib. Bianca tells her own stories in return. He never knows exactly where the truth lies. He only knows that the heart of the tale remains true, that quivering pulse between them, shared years of memory and yearning crafting reality with every word. They write it together.

Even if the tale grows a little cooler, a little smaller, with each passing year.

Lately, he finds it hard to get to the ink and paper in his suite. It’s simply there is other work at hand these days, Kirkwall thrumming with sparks and fits of revolution, chaos in sewers and boudoirs and common squares, demons and mages and all kinds of ridiculous shit. There’s characters here, brooding and silly and boisterous, personalities writ large in the new everyday.

And there’s Hawke, yes; Ferelden accent strangely charming, sly wit sending him chuckling, that way she claps him on the shoulder after victory large or small. There’s detail enough to fill a book or three in her blue eyes and dark hair and that smile, but he doesn’t seem to find the time to write as often as he did, before.

Bianca’s last two letters go unanswered for over a week. Yet his hands fit well on the crossbow bearing her name, and he uses it readily in the streets of his city, new calluses forming. It’s just that Hawke needs him in the here and now, and he never minds obliging. He likes the banter. That’s all it is, right?

But if he spends nights downstairs over a pint with the Ferelden and her merry band of misfits, well, it’s good to remember that ink and paper are not the only measures of remembrance.


End file.
